Why people believe stupid things

This might be the single most important concept there is to understand the world. The concept is very well explained in this blog post and I encourage you to read it, you can even listen to it here if you prefer. The concept, in short, is that we have two different kinds of beliefs, merit beliefs and crony beliefs. Merit beliefs are things like if I step of a high cliff I will fall down and hurt myself or even die. If this belief is true, or true enough it will help me survive and procreate, which is what our brains are developed to achieve. Our brains are not developed to understand what is absolutely true.

Crony beliefs are also adopted to help us survive and procreate, otherwise, they would not be adopted. The main thing that separates the two categories of beliefs are the reward mechanisms. The reward for adopting crony beliefs are often social in nature. If you hold a belief that others dislike, you might lose allies, get ostracized, rejected as a mate by the members of the opposite sex or even killed. The reward for holding merit beliefs that are true enough is that your actions are effective. For example, if you believe that digging ditches with a teaspoon is the most effective way to dig, you will find that your digging is less effective than others who use shovels or an excavator. One important point here is to understand that just because a belief is of the crony variety doesn't mean it has to be wrong. Just as a merit belief doesn't have to be right. 

Another interesting difference between merit and crony beliefs is the attitude towards the beliefs. When you hold merit beliefs they are pragmatic and critical. If you thought that the carton of milk you were buying cost 2 USD and the cashier informed you that it was actually 1 USD, you would be grateful that you were corrected. You would not experience any negative emotions. On the other hand, if your belief is crony you will be protective of it and treat it as a sacred belief. For example, you might believe that women as a group are just as physically strong as men. If this is a crony belief and someone argues against it, you will be protective of it, you will not question your belief, you will more likely question the intentions of the person arguing against your belief. I think Alphabet (formerly named Google) and the mainstream media hold crony beliefs that are incorrect. You can try Googling “Google fires employee” and compare the results to the memo he wrote and named Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber, How bias clouds our thinking about diversity and inclusion, or the interviews the former employee has done, which you can find here and here.

If you enjoyed this, maybe you would like to check out this article. https://steemit.com/philosophy/@pomperipossa/property-rights-exist-because-we-have-morality
Thanks for reading!